A First Reading

Objective for This Page: Working through the tasks on this page should give you some idea about how much theorizing you have to do to understand even a short poem.

Your First Impressions of "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell

typehand.gif (8738 bytes) Open a word processor to type your first impressions of the poem, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," after you read it from your textbook (or click on the airplane above to read it online). What's going on in the poem? What era in history is depicted? Who's speaking in the poem? What is the speaker's condition? Why? How are readers supposed to feel about the speaker and the speaker's situation?

For your convenience, all the writing questions from this module have been placed into word processing files. Click on the link that matches the word processor you have to put the file onto your computer so you can save your answers and re-open the file on later pages of this module. (Confused? See the Word Processing Hint, then click your browser's back button to return here.) For now, answer the page 3 questions.

Word 7 (.doc) Rich Text Format (.rtf) Generic Word Processor (.txt)

A DEMONSTRATION: At a first encounter with this poem, readers have to piece together the literal situation of this speaker. If the title does not call to mind the image of an airplane--and specifically the B-17 bomber pictured on this page--that they may have seen in movies about WWII, e.g. The Memphis Belle, then the words "fighters" and "turret" might. But readers have to discard the possible images of prizefighters and castle turrets.

If readers know that "flak" is anti-aircraft fire, such as readers might have seen in televised coverage of the Gulf War, then they will get the idea that the speaker is being shot at.

With those realizations, revisiting the situation of the speaker in the poem should cause readers to recognize that he (since WWII bomber personnel were male) is in an airplane. The title and the image of a B-17 should cause the recognition that the speaker is crouched over inside the plexiglass and metal hemisphere on the underside of the plane during an attack.

Eventually, readers may get more specific images. For instance, those who have seen a WWII flight jacket, e.g. in the movie Forever Young with Mel Gibson, or in pictures of the real crew from the Memphis Belle (left), might recall the fur collar on these leather jackets and imagine someone sweating onto the fur, due to the heat at ground level when the plane took off or perhaps from fear. In the cold temperatures of 25,000 feet and maybe even 30,000 feet ("six miles from earth"), the sweat could freeze because temperatures would be below zero Fahrenheit at that altitude year round.

No matter what level of understanding readers bring to the first four lines, the last line is always a jolt. Most speakers of poems aren't dead. This one is, and the cold, matter-of-fact tone of the ending line seems to heighten the amount of compassion readers might have built up while coming to understand his situation.

Following Up: In addition to writing your own first impression of the poem, you should click on the B-17 photo at the top of the page and read not just the poem and the poet's own note giving some background on the poem, but you should also read the impressions of other readers that are gathered on that web page. Which of these seems best to you? Worst? Taken together, what do these other readers' comments add to your impression of the poem?

The URL for this page is: http://vccslitonline.vccs.edu/ReadingPoetry/afirst.htm

On First Reading a Poem